The promised smackdown arrives. Everyone knows that the character of war changes constantly but that the nature of war is immutable. Why do they know this? Because they were told so at war college. Everyone, that is, except my FP & Future of War teammate Rosa von Brooks. She’s read all the books and she ...

Everyone knows that the character of war changes constantly but that the nature of war is immutable. Why do they know this? Because they were told so at war college.

Everyone, that is, except my FP & Future of War teammate Rosa von Brooks. She’s read all the books and she comes away unpersuaded. For example, she writes, “Take cyberwar: Much of what is often spoken of under the ‘cyberwar’ rubric is not violent in the Clausewitzian sense of the word. Cyberattacks might shut down the New York Stock Exchange and cause untold financial damage, for instance, but would we say that this makes them violent?”

She notes that Clausewitzian strict constructionists will then respond, “You can blather on all you want about cyberwar or financial war, but if what you’re talking about is not both violent and political, it’s just not ‘war,’ but something else.”

Not so fast, she counters. “But there are many other ways to understand and define violence. Consider various forms of psychological torture or abuse. Or consider cyberattacks that lead to loss of life as an indirect result of extended power outages: Why not view such attacks as a form of violence if they lead predictably to loss of life?”

Then Brooks gets all neo-Westphalian on their asses. “It is the state that creates and defines the role of the military…. It is also the state that defines the legalcontours of war.” So, for a truly subordinate military, war might be war, but war is what your civilian superiors say it is.

I can’t do the piece justice with this summary, so if you are gonna comment, please read the whole thing first. Brooks, considered by some to be a leading candidate to become the next president of Robot Rights Watch, the cool new NGO, also provides links at the end to some of her other writings.

Meanwhile, two other FPsters have been dishing some good stuff lately.